


The Secrets of Command

by Philomytha



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, comment-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-03
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Korabik Gottyan has a plasma arc trained on Captain Vorkosigan's back.</p><p>written for Avantika's prompt 'Gottyan, the captain gave him his plasma arc'</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secrets of Command

The Captain sat down on the path, his back to Korabik. Korabik looked at the plasma arc, at the broad back entrusted to him. Damn him! Damn him a thousand times over for this.

He raised the plasma arc. Aimed. The Captain didn't so much as twitch, sitting perfectly still.

He remembered, suddenly, randomly, doing target practice drills on the ship. He'd been good to start with, but the Old Man hadn't been satisfied, and had made him drill and drill, speeding up his reaction times, increasing his accuracy, doing left-handed work as well as right. Practicing the draw, the aim, the stance. Practicing from different positions, flat on his back, on his stomach, sitting, standing. Practicing in zero-gee and normal, in good light and bad. One day you'll need this, he'd always said, and when you need it, it should be perfect.

Right now he made the easiest target imaginable. If he squinted, Korabik could almost see the target marks on his back. He lined up the sights on the arc, automatically.

Then he stood there, gazing through the sights, looking through to his future. Captain. His own ship, at last. They'd even had the funeral already, and Korabik had officially taken command. It had been so good to be the one making the decisions, the one everyone looked to. To be the one to lead.

It would be harder, now that a few other people had seen the Captain again, but it was a confused time and Korabik was sure he could make it work. He was good. Good enough to be captain of his own ship.

His finger ran over the trigger.

He could see the Captain's back rising and falling gently. It was mesmerising. He really was alive. Korabik remembered the funeral. He'd wept, real tears, and thought that he would give anything to see the Old Man march onto the bridge again. But to give up the bridge itself for that...

A breeze tossed the Captain's hair and stirred up dead leaves on the path, but the Captain didn't move. Korabik had never known anyone who could be as still as the Captain, when it was needed. Korabik had seen him when the Nuovo Brasilian raiding party had booby-trapped their shuttle, how still the Captain had been as the armoured engineers disarmed the pressure bombs around him, when at any moment they all could have been blown to pieces. How still he'd been when waiting for the raiders to fall into the retaliatory trap he'd laid for them. He was as still as that now.

Korabik knew he'd never have come up with that trap, and he wasn't sure he could have stayed as still as that with bombs all around him. He was good, but the Captain was a genius.

A spasm of jealous anger made his finger twitch and his lips pull back.

The Captain didn't move, didn't know that Korabik was going to kill him. His breathing was so slow and regular Korabik almost thought he might be asleep, except that his head was up.

What kind of man did a thing like this anyway? The Captain's traps were always traps for the mind as well as the body, and this was as neat a trap as any Korabik had seen. But this time he was the one caught in it.

He could pull the trigger. Hide the body. Walk away. He could do it.

Then why, he asked himself, why hadn't he done it yet?

 _"Why did it work?" the Captain echoed. "You want me to tell you my secrets?"_

 _The officers of the_ General Vorkraft _were all a little tipsy, celebrating after defeating the Nuovo Brasilians. Korabik was sober, because someone had to stay sober, but the Captain's eyes glittered. He put an arm around Korabik's shoulders._

 _"It's not a secret," he said earnestly, gazing around his officers. "It's not a trick. The mind is the only battlefield. You have to coax your opponent into doing just what you want them to do, and make them think it's what they want as well."_

What did he want here, Korabik wondered. What did he want? What did the Captain think he wanted?

The answer came to him suddenly, certainly. He wanted to be as good as the Captain one day. However long it took, however long he had to spend following him around laboriously working out the puzzles the Captain solved instantly. He wanted to be that good. And there was only one way to get to be that good, and this wasn't it.

His hand slowly lowered, the muzzle of the plasma arc pointing at the dirt path. The Captain had said he could walk this back, that all could be forgiven and forgotten. And if anything was proof of that, surely this was. It was, he realised, why the Captain had done it.

Tremendous relief washed over him. He wanted command, but more than command, he wanted to learn. He wanted to learn from this man, for surely there was no better man in the whole of the Service. It had been the Captain who'd first awakened this ambition in him, who'd made him believe he might be good enough one day. And the Captain hadn't taught him to win by cheating. Korabik looked at the broad back before him again. He'd guarded the Captain's back in fights, and the Captain had guarded his, and they'd won together. Perhaps they would again.

He walked forwards and came around to stand in front of the Captain. Still the Captain did not move. Ceremonially, slowly, Korabik laid the plasma arc down in front of him. The Captain's eyes lifted then, seemed to see right through him, seemed to know every step of the decision he had made. He looked down at the plasma arc, checked the safety, and gave it back grip-first. Korabik blinked, then understood. He set it in his own holster. He was carrying a weapon in the Captain's service again.

Then the Captain reached out a hand, and Korabik pulled him to his feet. The Captain leaned on him, limping, his bad leg having stiffened whilst he waited. He entrusted his weight to Korabik wordlessly, and Korabik understood the message. It was over. He was the Captain's Second again, and he was back on duty. He would keep watching the Captain's back.


End file.
